


More than you know

by katiebuttercup



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-10 20:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11698929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katiebuttercup/pseuds/katiebuttercup
Summary: I'm here for ladies supporting ladies so I'm turning the "overheard people trash talking Molly" in the ladies room intoMolly overhears people being supportive of her and Sherlock





	1. Chapter 1

BBC owns everything 

Molly snuggles deeper into her Christmas jumper before reaching up and undoing the complicated "thing" Mary had done with her hair. Once she was back sporting her sleek pony tail she felt much more like herself. 

Now that she was free of best friend duties, even the thought of being friends with someone as cool as Mary brought a smile to her face, she could discreetly leave. 

Parties were not her idea of fun especially Christmas ones, she wanted to get out before the drink really started flowing and she got caught by a drunken colleague. 

Molly sets her iPhone onto music and scrolls through the options whilst humming along to the tinny Christmas songs coming through the speaker. The ladies room, often bustling with girls fixing their make up and chatting was blissfully silent, Molly had chosen it for exactly that purpose, far enough away from the main party that only the hardiest of young women would attempt it if she were wearing heals which nearly all the women were. 

The confines of her gold dress make crossing her legs impossible unless she wants to show far too much, even in tights and locked in a cubicle. Molly settles for drawing her legs up and resting her iPhone on her knees, the better to select music without worrying her phone would end up on the floor. 

She's just got into a groove when the door opens, Molly swears inaudibly, dialing down the sound. 

She's just about to resign herself to fate when she hears her name.

"I told you Molly was here with Sherlock," 

Molly recognises the voices, Abigail, one of Mary's friends and a woman Molly knew only in passing. She always felt slightly awkward in social situations But Abigail always said hello to her in the corridor. 

"Well if anyone could get Sherlock out on a date it'd be Molly," 

Molly doesn't know this voice. Her hands freeze halfway between putting her earbuds back in. She has the horrible urge to giggle. Not because it's funny just out of the sheer horror of hearing herself talked about while she listened.

"I told you once he came back he was different, I told you he was sweet on her," 

"She's engaged."

"Nope!" Abigail pops the P. "Broken off"

The other woman lowers her voice but there's nothing to muffle her own incredulous wonder.

"Because of Sherlock?"

"Who knows but now there's nothing standing in the way,"

"You've read too many romance novels," the stranger chides, "besides Sherlock doesn't like anyone like that, I mean the man is gorgeous but cold."

Molly dares to peek through the tiny bracket of light between the door and the stall wall. The stranger shivers theatrically. 

"And Molly's a little ray of sunshine," Abigail insists, "he's barely left her side all night,"

There is an uncomfortable level of emphasis on that for Molly's liking.

Molly draws back, hugging her knees to her chest. Her heart racing against her breastbone and that hope that refuses to die sparks to life. She ruthlessly pushes it down. She doesn't need it. 

Hope keeps her up at night. She's past it, she promised herself. 

She wonders what Abigail sees, she's been with Sherlock all night and hasn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, they'd been talking about a recent case, she hadnt sensed any difference in Sherlock. Sherlock was simply Sherlock maybe a little nicer but she'd assumed Mary had just out manouvered Sherlock and made him be nice to her as she always did.

The women move towards the door, still talking. 

"I bet you next Christmas they'll be here as a couple," 

"Well if anyone deserves to be happy it's Molly, I keep wanting to talk to her but the morgue freaks me out,"

Whatever the answer it is cut off by the door. Molly is left in the deafening silence, wrapping her arms around her knees. She's not sure she'll be able to look at Sherlock without looking for something that probably doesn't exsist. 

Molly gives herself a shake, unfolds her leg one at a time. She stands, opens the door and stares at her reflection. 

There is a slash of glittery stars along her cheekbone, Sherlock hadn't said anything but he had made to touch them before they had left the house before quickly turning away.

Molly dabs a piece of toilet paper under the tap and then brushes it over her cheek. The glitter is gone, only the vague hint of colour remains. 

She squares her shoulders and moves for the door, anxious to get home. She doesn't want people speculating about her and Sherlock, she's spent far too much time in her own head overthinking every interaction with him she doesn't need to know everyone else is overthinking it too. 

Especially since they were obviously so wrong about them. 

She scoots around the edges of the crowd, years of blending in, being nothing but wallpaper had its uses. She texts Mary letting her know she's leaving but holds back before hitting send until she's in the cab-Mary wasn't above ambushing her. 

Tomorrow she'll think about it, tonight with the sparkles and the glitter and the conversation sliding far too close to personal-or as personal as Sherlock ever gets, Molly knows she'll let her guard down and be disappointed. 

Tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock stares at the ladies room door debating how much he cares about social convention against his desire to find Molly. It's only John and Mary's potential embrassment that stops him from charging into unknown territory. 

The door opens and Sherlock straightens trying not to look too conspicuous but the women-not Molly, the disappointment is sharp in his chest, are too busy talking to notice him. 

"She's such a sweetie, I don't think I could deal with Sherlock like Molly, it's practically saint like how she deals with him," the blonde says. 

Sherlock thinks of the slap she'd delivered to him when he was high and rubs his jaw. That hadn't felt particarly saint like. 

"Well she's waited long enough," the other women says just as they turn the corner, "for someone whose supposedly so smart he's pretty thick, I mean fancy not knowing how Molly felt for him all those years. He's been positively awful to her..."

Sherlock locks a snarl behind his teeth, feeling a wave of anger curl up inside his chest. How dare they...

As soon as the anger flares it dies as logic, his last respite against the mundane says, 'they are right'

He had been cruel to Molly, and what made it worse was that he had been knowingly cruel, belittling her and pushing her away so she wouldn't see how weak he really was for her. Creating a chronological time line had been near impossible, his emotions refused to bend to his logic, it was a tangled mess of emotions that he ruthlessly repressed but one look, one soft word and he was lost. 

It was almost laughable how Molly has come to represent logic and clear thinking in his mind palace. Unknowingly he began to rely on her in cases, retreating to her room in the mind palace to centre himself. To find the answers he was missing. She has never let him down, never let him fall. His faith in her is complete.

She has all the answers, he never questions it, never thinks twice. Molly will have the answer. 

But while his mind relies on her logic and critical thinking his body apparently has other concerns...more earthly concerns and he's increasingly having to take himself in hand, The Woman has her uses he supposed. 

He's been coasting, he knows, letting his subconscious do its thing while he pretends disinterest but it exposes him in ways he doesn't expect, a glance in Molly's direction that lasts too long, a gentler tone when he speaks to her, a kiss on the cheek, an attempt at a joke to make her smile. He knows the list is growing but he's ignored it. The Mary in his mind palace is just waiting to show him and gloat he knows.

Until tonight. 

Molly hasn't looked particularly striking, the dress suits her-more expensive than her regular clothes, picked by Mary no doubt. Not too low cut or short it nevertheless flatters her figure and her legs, short yet incredibly shapely had almost short circuited his brain when he had first seen her. There were a hundred women who would have looked better in that dress but Sherlock was transfixed. She'd looked like Molly, more self confident than in the black number at Christmas, she had exuded happiness and beauty and his subconscious kicked him in the gut. 

Sex appeal like beauty was based on a social construct, but whatever base instinct inside Sherlock reacted to such things he was sure it only had one name. 

Molly. 

"Molly..." he realises that while contemplating the power the small woman had over him had distracted hm from seeing her exit the door he was supposedly looking at. 

She skirts around the party goers, and Sherlock follows the bright colour of her Christmas jumper, covering her almost like a dress. His long strides let him eat up the space between them and he gently takes her arm.

"Molly," his voice sounds different when he's with her. Deeper. He's sure she can hear the tenderness in his voice. 

Her arm turns in his grip, and Sherlock realises that the stars decorating the gentle slant of her cheekbone was gone, he had wanted to follow the path of that glitter with his fingers, with his lips. 

The loss of it feels like a punch to his gut. 

"I'm gonna call it a night can you tell John and Mary that I'm tired..."

She's avoiding looking at him directly, Molly always stares right at him, captures his gaze with unnerving accuracy. 

Sherlock gently tilts her chin so that she looks right into his eyes, he flashes back to that conversation in the hallway, the day they had spent together, the day that had given him a taste of what he could have, but that ring. 

That damned ring. 

And all he could let himself do was kiss her cheek, chaste and heartfelt but oh so far from what he wanted. 

Molly's eyes flutter shut, she's warring with herself he knows, ready to be the voice of reason. His thumb caresses the fullness of her bottom lip and then he is kissing her, lips sliding over hers, swallowing his own name as she whispers it. There is a blissful moment where there is nothing but the feel of Molly's mouth against his, her slight body pressed against his. Eager for more stimuli he presses closer arms wrapping around her. She tastes heavenly, the warmth of her lips and the slight tacky taste of her lipgloss. He'll probably be wearing more of her lipgloss by the time they come up for air. 

That happens much quicker then Sherlock is happy with but suddenly Molly's hands are balled into fists and she's pushing him away. He can feel his own smug grin plastered over his face. 

Molly is looking around furtively, wiping at her mouth, red and swollen from his kisses. It's much better then her lipgloss Sherlock thinks. 

Molly's face is frozen in shock, Sherlock follows her gaze to the two women he overheard talking outside the waiting room. They have identical looks of impish delight on their face. The smug feeling not abating in the least Sherlock grins back at them. They excuse themselves in a flutter of excited giggling. Sherlock waits until they are out of sight before reaching for Molly again but she pushes him away.

She looks shattered. 

"Oh God it's going to be all over the hospital by tomorrow, what are they going to be thinking--" she suddenly looks at Sherlock, "what were you thinking? Don't you know what you've done?"

"I think I was kissing you, pretty sure that was me," 

Her answering glare is almost enough to deflate his smugness. 

"Sherlock, they're going to think we're together," she laces her fingers together as a demonstration, "together like a couple,"

Sherlock frowns, "I'm not a child Molly I'm aware of the conclusions they will draw. That was the point,"

"What point? To humiliate me? Oh God!" She looks at the ceiling in despair. 

She's upset, it's a testament to John's infulence on him that he realises it. He reaches for her again but she bats him away. Sherlock locks his jaw in annoyance at her evasiveness.

"Molly I don't care what people think--"

"Well I do! Unlike you I don't have the luxury of indifference. I care what people think about me, why am I always your experiment when you want to experiment with emotion?"

"Because you are the measure by which I analyse how much I care, Sherlock says, "Because so far I haven't found anything else that comes close,"

This time when he comes close, she lets him. A few tears escape her eyes. 

"I don't care if they deduce that we are together because that is exactly what we are. I came here tonight for you. I am enduring this interminable blandness company so that I might be able to kiss you." He fails to resist the temptation to trace a path across her cheekbone, he pauses a second before kissing her, her delicate little fingers coming up to caress the side of his face. Every nerve Sherlock has switches on, soaking up her touch. 

Breathing is an entirely useless function, Sherlock decides but his body refuses to listen and so he pulls away.

Her mind is working over time, he can practically see the thoughts whirling through her mind. 

"Do you still want to leave?" Sherlock asks. 

Molly lets out a sound that could be a laugh. It sounds like a sob.

"I-I- guess my reputation isn't going to fall much further--" Molly bites her lip. 

Sherlock frowns, "if you're really worried about the idiots you work with--" 

"No it's just everyone knows that-" she makes a face. She can't say it even now. It was too good. Too unreal. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

"I'm not explaining this well," Sherlock says. He brings up an unpleasant memory, focuses on the slap after his callous comment on her engagement. 

"You remember what I said about the end of your engagement?"

Molly stiffens, "yes,"

"I didn't say that just because I was on drugs and lashing out, I said it because I was jealous" 

Sherlock pushes through that barrier, it's distinctly unpleasant but he forges on.

"I was glad that your engagement was over--I didn't know it then but," he clears his throat. "I love you Molly Hooper"

"Sherlock--" 

There's something terribly childlike in his face, something raw and lonely. It speaks to Molly's heart.

She wraps his arms around her, he's stiff but slowly he returns her embrace. 

Over Sherlock's shoulder she sees Mary, one glance says it all and Mary quickly disappears. 

Molly gathers every bit of strength she has and whispers the truth. Sherlock sags against her. 

"Do you want to come to Baker Street," there's a careful nonchalance to his voice, a promise. 

Molly catches his gaze, holds it: "yes"


End file.
